Several cities outside the U.S. have sustained attacks on utility systems and extortion demands.

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week.

Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong.

Criminals
have launched online attacks that disrupted power equipment in several
regions outside of the U.S., he said, without identifying the countries
affected. The goal of the attacks was extortion, he said.

"We
have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of
cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands," he
said in a statement posted to the Web on Friday by the conference's organizers, the SANS Institute.
"In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting
multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but
all involved intrusions through the Internet."

"According to Mr.
Donahue, the CIA actively and thoroughly considered the benefits and
risks of making this information public, and came down on the side of
disclosure," SANS said in the statement.

One conference attendee
said the disclosure came as news to many of the government and industry
security professionals in attendance. "It appeared that there were a
lot of people who didn't know this already," said the attendee, who
asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak with
the press.

He confirmed SANS' report of the talk. "There were
apparently a couple of incidents where extortionists cut off power to
several cities using some sort of attack on the power grid, and it does
not appear to be a physical attack," he said.

Hacking the power grid made front-page headlines in September when CNN aired a video showing an Idaho National Laboratory
demonstration of a software attack on the computer system used to
control a power generator. In the demonstration, the smoking generator
was rendered inoperable.

The U.S. is taking steps to lock down the computers that manage its power systems, however.